IT is a multifaceted challenge undertaken against the hegemony of middlemen, mill owners, anti-farmer state and central government policies and ruling party’s apathetic attitude, distress sale and farmer suicides. In a first of its sorts after its recent formation a year back, the West Bengal state unit of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) has decided to reach to more than 11,000 villages throughout the state within a fortnight, taking the call of jail bharo programme on August 9, called by the AIKS on the plight of the farmers. Trade Unions have decided to join in
AS the prime minister was labouring to deliver his one and half hour long speech at the end of the no-confidence motion debate on Friday, June 20, Rakbar alias Akbar Khan was being lynched to death in Alwar district of Rajasthan over allegations of cow smuggling.
AT the call of the CPI(M) and CPI, people of Andhra Pradesh took up protest actions on July 23 against the Modi government for not according Special Category Status and failure in fulfilling the promises made to the state during bifurcation. Protest rallies, rasta rokos, dharnas and other protests were conducted throughout the state. State leaders of the two parties attended in various centres and exposed the BJP leadership in betraying the people of AP.
A DELEGATION of CPI(M) led by Nilotpal Basu, Polit Bureau member and ex MP and Haryana secretary Surender Singh visited Firozpur Jhirka and village Kolgaon on July 22 to meet the family of lynching victim Akbar Khan alias Rakbar Khan by a vigilante group on the intervening night of July 20-21 in Ramgarh (Alwar) Rajasthan.
The delegation noted that this lynching is particularly shocking as it comes within days of the stinging Supreme Court judgment over vigilante crimes and such groups taking upon themselves the functions of law enforcement, based on self-declared allegations.
KEEPING in mind the challenges before women, AIDWA has decided to organise a huge all India women’s protest rally in Delhi on September 4. The main issues are the increasing violence and brutality against women, especially girl children, growing unemployment, food security, the grim issue of starvation and malnutrition and the escalating communal and casteist attacks. The rally will be directed against the anti-women and anti-people policies of the BJP-RSS regime led by Narendra Modi.
THE no-confidence motion discussed and voted upon in the Lok Sabha on July 20 became an occasion for exposure of the four-year record of the Modi government.
FIRST it was the finance secretary who said that if the government borrowed less then more savings would be available for the private sector to borrow. Then it was the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India who talked of government borrowing “crowding out” private borrowing. The common theme here is that there is a given amount of savings, a fixed pool as it were, from which if the government takes more, then less will be available for the private sector.
NEWSPAPER headlines over the last few days have highlighted three facts which point to the current abysmal state of the Indian economy. The first relates to inflation, where the June 2018 wholesale price index was 5.77 percent above that of June last year; this is the highest inflation rate witnessed since December 2013. The second is a burgeoning trade deficit: the trade deficit in June, at $ 16.6 billion, was again the highest for any month in the last five years.
A STATE-level convention was organised by the Bahujana Left Front (BLF) on the “Need for Electoral Reforms and Bahujana Government in Telangana – Role of the Voter” at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram at Baghlingampally in Hyderabad on July 15.
IT is now about ten months after Hurricane Maria hit the US territory of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean in September 2017. The hurricane destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, brought down electricity and drinking water systems, and communications networks. It also wreaked havoc on health facilities, roads and other infrastructure, much of which has not yet been restored. Estimates have put the total damage caused at over $100 billion (Rs 6,80,000 crores), making it the third highest economic loss due to tropical cyclones in the US since 1900.